Monday, July 31, 2017

Perdition is a book by +Courtney Campbell,
detailing a campaign setting best described as hell by way of Hieronymus Bosch.
Along with this setting is provided a significant corpus of house rules, enough
so that the book can stand on its own as a singular game, or be sorted through
as needed.

The setting
of Perdition, its primary selling point, is not built with maps or lists of
proper nouns, but in a minimalist, in-passing style. It is more the idea
of a setting, rather than the setting itself. If there is detail at all, it
will be brief (the great devils that rule the world of Perdition get a
few paragraphs of description each), and more often it will be a feature
brought up without extraneous comment: the equipment lists in particular excel
towards this end. There are war cassowaries. You can hire gimps as hirelings. You
can buy a bicycle. There is a list of hats that give you skill bonuses.

That last
sentence is easily the most important point I will make in this entire review.
There is a list of hats that give you skill bonuses.

All of this
means that the book is geared toward relating mechanics to the setting’s core
conceit (see: the rules for cutting deals with devils), rather than bogging the
reader down with exposition. Perdition is not an invitation into the
specific world of Courtney Campbell, but an invitation to take that idea and
use it how you will. You can buy in as much as you want.

The
mechanics displayed in Perdition hit a sweet spot between OSR/DIY
simplicity and newer-school crunch – reading through the classes was fun,
because there are both many options to take and they are all easily understood.
Additions to the typical formula, such as mental HP, the wickedness stat and
the spell dice system (+Arnold K’s GLOG rules are similar) are all easy to
grasp.

I’ll give
additional praise for the book being a complete text – classes, equipment,
mechanics for magic and combat, a bestiary for both normal animals and various
fiends, and everything else that would be needed to run a game.

The art is
excellent. It’s not necessarily of anything specifically in the book,
but it’s certainly effective at driving home the fact that people have entered
the wrong neighborhood of the Garden of Earthly Delights. What more
could be asked for?

On the
whole, Perdition is what you make of it. For my own part, I think I
would perhaps not run the setting as unrelentingly bleak as it is presented,
but the light touch of the worldbuilding makes changes to taste easy. If, say,
I wanted to run a more heroic campaign fighting against the darkness instead of
working for it, I could do that handily enough with what is presented here. The
mechanics are nourishing food for thought beyond that.

Friday, July 28, 2017

I’ve been
playing Supergiant Games’ Pyre this week, and it is fantastic.
Wonderful. Stupendous. Superlative. Very, very solid. A guilt-free Day 1
purchase, soundtrack included.

You might
have guessed that I speak from a position of incredible bias. You are
absolutely correct. And like both Bastion and Transistor, Pyre
brings to mind that most common of idle DM thoughts:

“Can this be
made into a tabletop?”

After
playing a good amount of it this week, I say “yes, easily”. I wish there was a
proper lore/art book (I would buy it in a heartbeat), but the notepad I have
been keeping ready will serve enough for this little project. Right now I just
want to get ideas down and in a place where other eyes might give them a look
over.

Since Pyre
has RPG elements already, and those elements are not particularly crunch-heavy,
translation should be pretty easy. There’s a solid amount of support for both
the tactical end (the Rites) and the story-based parts (the rest of it), and
even exploration / wilderness survival (making the trek between ritual sites).
The premise itself fits into a campaign mold easily (you have all been exiled
from your home, and have to form a group of pilgrims to compete in the Rites
against other groups to earn your return home).

There are
four attributes in Pyre (Glory, Quickness, Presence, Hope), and three
primary abilities in the “combat” section of the game (Aura, Jump, Sprint – all
with variants). Each character has a short bio, providing information of a
character’s, race, background, astrological sign, crime, motive for the crime,
and how many years they have been exiled.

System-wise,
I find myself leaning towards an adaptation of the West End Games D6 System. Templates could cover the eight different
races, and some additional skills can be thrown in to provide some out-of-Rite
usability. I’ve found myself fond of “background / identity as a skill” as
found in the third edition of *Unknown Armies*, so some of the background bits
might be turned into attributes (“of course I can give someone the evil eye! I’m
a bog hag!”)

The “combat”
system (Air quotes used because it’s not really fighting, and more like magical
basketball. It’s said in-game that the laws of the Rites forbid harm towards
the opposing team) is the main thing that will require some elbow grease, as in
the game proper it is real-time, controlling one character at a time. I have
some reservations about switching over to a more turn-based method, but it’s
certainly possible.

The XP system
can be kept as-is, and abilities / items will just need whatever tweaks are
needed for WEGd6 (many of them won’t need it).

I’ve got
outlines of all the material I’d need in the future, so I expect a preliminary
version of the rules won’t be too far off.

Regardless
of all this blather on my part, it’s a great game. Art, music, gameplay, story, it's all great- and it's all new. Supergiant consistently makes some of the best and brightest fantasy worlds out there, and for that I am ever thankful.

Monday, July 24, 2017

While bored
at work the other day, the following thoughts came into my head in quick
succession.

“I sure do
love Planescape.”

“Oh hey, the
Outlands are a big disc.”

“I sure do
love worlds that are also discs.”

“What if all
the planes were mashed into the Outlands which was also being carried around on
something’s back.”

“The turtle
is traditional but what about whales? Bahamut needs love.”

“Also I need
to do something different with alignments. Humours are good. Can work out the
outer planes later.”

“I should
make this a setting.”

So I made it
a setting.

Perfect.

The City
in the Center

A mobius
torus of alabaster and samite, with streets of marble and pillars of oldest
basalt. The homes of the gods are built here, tumbled together and layered atop
each other. The passing of Time is marked by the ringing of the city’s twelve
mighty bells, each a cathedral of its own. The one hundred and eight forms of
Death maintain order between the gods and watch over the Great Discape below.
Vast flocks of winged servants carry prayers and pilgrims to and from the city.
The gods debate and feast and fight and fuck in the City’s plazas and pools and
parks. The hymns of the angelic legions are never ceasing, and the air is
redolent with incense and heavy with prayers.

Floating in
the center of the city, above the very peak of the mountain Vüngelbraeskilnük,
is MANA YOOD SHUSHAI – the creator of the gods, the creator of the Great
Discape, the First and Only, he who is worshiped by the gods alone, who
slumbers forever in the center of all things.

Vüngelbraeskilnük

The mountain
in the center of the world, reaching up all the way to the City in the Center.
Its slopes are pocked with the caves of the night-gaunts, studded with the
palaces of the ice giants, engraved with switchback pilgrimage paths.
Vast-winged eagles that never land to nest fly cry keening songs in the
crystalline air.

In the
temple at the mountain’s ice-capped peak lives Skarl the Drummer, whose
heart-shaped drum and its constant beat keep MANA YOOD SUSHAI lulled in his
slumber. Were Skarl ever to stop, the world would cease to be.

The City
Below the Center

A ring-shaped
metropolis around the base of Vüngelbraeskilnük, where peoples from all over
the Great Discape come together in chaos and argumentation. It is a city of
streets like broken fingers, of canals coughing up technicolor sludge, of
buildings built like tumors.

The City
Below is ruled by 36 Arcarchs, each ruling over a ten-degree slice of the city.
Theirs is a restless life, attempting to balance the machinations of both the
criminal guilds and the other 35 Arcarchs. But there is progress being made: the
days before the abolition of slavery are fading memories in the minds of the
grandfolk, there are more schools and hospitals opening up, the city guard has
been mostly cleaned out, and one can occasionally find a legitimate business
with only a little bit of effort. For all the chaos within the City Below, the
atmosphere is one of optimism.

Environment
Types of the Central Humorous Low-Land

Sanguine
Savanna

Blood-and-gold
grasses appear as waves of fire under the wind sunlight. Clusters of acacia
trees and baobabs break the horizon. When the rainy season comes, the storms
bark with laughter and the newborn lightninglings leap between the
thunderheads. The inhabitants follow the rains and the herds of cup-headed
russeceroses in an eternal cycle. Territory is marked by stamping down patterns
in the grass, to be seen from above by tribal balloonsmen.

Choleric
Desert

A cracked
expanse of off-yellow grit and salt crust. Everything smells faintly of urine,
and any moisture has long since been baked away. Anything living that finds
itself in these lands will find itself dead in short order, and shortly
thereafter animated by whatever sparks of hate that might still jump between
its desiccated neurons. The deserts are rich grounds for mining salt and
antiwater (it looks something like bismuth), drawing the crazy or desperate
from afar. The local inhabitants, mummified ages ago, sit in their spiteful
spires and bicker. The hateful dead have nothing better to do.

Phlegmatic
Forest

Temperate
rainforests, perpetually shrouded by mists. The wildlife is placid and lonesome
– the larger beasts stride through the silvery mists with moss growing out of
their fur and birds nesting in their antlers, while the smaller creatures
scurry in the ferns beneath. The trees are like towers, their thick bark carved
by growth and elements into a story of the years. It is a place for meditation
on the bank of a mirror-pool. The inhabitants live in seclusion, their
settlements hidden in the mists. They have emptied themselves of noise and
bother and worry, and might offer a clay bottle of it to those who come to them

Melancholic
Bog

Black,
cadaverous swampland. Half-rotted trees, peat pits, ghost-fires, brackish water,
clammy cold. Chemical vents belch smoke and haze skywards to be trapped by the
bordering hills. It is the domain of bugs, slimy things, and misshapen
creatures. Things sink into the bogs – slowly, ever slowly. Everything sinks
and does not rise again. In the pits that the peat miners dig they find the
past in layers. Bog Cake, they call it. The inhabitants of this place have
hunched backs and downward-cast eyes. Their pale skin oozes black ichor, sucked
up from the guts of the blind catfish fish they eat.

The Rim
Lands

Towards the
edge of the Great Discape, past the Lands-In Balance, the land takes different
shapes and the people different forms, breaking away from the trends of the
Humorous Low-Lands. They will not be elucidated upon at this time.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

There’s magic out there older than books, older than bricks, older
than bread. Magic so old it’s hardly magic anymore. Magic woven of
golden savanna mornings when the apes looked up to the sky and named
the sunlight itself. It is the magic of a master’s hands, the
burning breast of the journeyman before his test, the tottering steps
of the infant.

When
you’re four years old and step into your grandmother’s kitchen,
it is the old magic you feel.

Wizards
hate talking about it: the old magic strips them of their
star-spangled hats and gold-leaf diplomas and forces them to admit
that there was a time before wizards, and that those poor
unenlightened souls of the past weren’t so ignorant and
superstitious after all, and that when wizards and all their
universities have passed from the world the old magic will remain.

The
old magic breathes and lives and burns in mankind – there is no one
among Mother’s children, no matter how wretched or ignorant, who
could not learn these arts. The wizards sneer and the moralizers
wring their hands and the hateful spit bile, but the old magic lives.

The
spells listed below are the most common expressions of the Humble
Art. The majority of practitioners are ordinary common folk (making
the old magic fairly unpopular with kings and tyrants), and they can
be found in all but the most remote pickets of the world. Those who
make a profession of the old magic go on to become hedge mages and
witches.

Several
of the following spells are less common or less popular in the modern
era, and several more have been co-opted by mainstream magical
traditions, but all are still known.

It
is important to note that the old magic is significantly more
hands-on than academic magic, and the lines between magic art and
mundane craft can become blurred.

by Zdenek Burian

Spells of the Old Magic

Call upon the Folk

The Folk are always out there in the wild places: watching, waiting,
listening. A man who shows the proper respect can call upon them for
aid through the old magic, and they will answer.

Detection

The mind opens up, and there is a moment of awareness beyond what the
senses can normally grasp. The spell can be amended to nearly any
specialized end, but the old forms tend towards animals, evil, the
Folk, people, place, poison and disease, time, and weather.

Identify

A spell to reveal enchantments and hidden names. In the basic form,
it might reveal the components of a simple spell, or the common name
of an unknown thing. If performed by a master, or by the aid of
sympathetic components, it may reveal hidden identities or even true
names.

Hunter’s Mark

Each hunter has a sign, used to mark a beast as sacrosanct. No hunter
will touch a creature bearing another hunter’s Mark, for fear of a
curse falling upon their interference. It is reserved for beasts
deemed worthy adversaries, and is not to be wasted on simpler game.

Locate

The position of an item, person, place, or beast is burned into the
mind as long as the spell remains. This art is dependent upon
maintaining sympathy, and will not work at all without the
appropriate components.

Manhood

A boy is charged with a task and sent out. If he succeeds, his geas
is fulfilled and his father welcomes him home. If he fails, a boy he
remains. Some die before their task is done, and the mantle of
manhood remains unclaimed.

Mending

One of the three most common spells in the world (the others being
Produce Flame and Women’s Work), and friend to
housewives, craftsmen, and busybodies. But, be warned: Mend a thing
too much and it will stop mending right. Consequences are not meant
to be dodged, no matter how well one can recover from an accident.

Purify Food and Water

Wizards love to decry this spell as
simply boiling water and cooking meat. They are correct to a point:
beyond that point the practitioner might draw out disease and poison,
even rot and heavy metals. Doing so will result in dry meat, limp
vegetables, and rotball sprites that must be dealt with, but the food
is safe.

Produce Flame

Mother stole fire from the dragons and led us through the snows by
its light. All it takes is a snap of the fingers or a soft breath
into cupped hands.

Spare the Dying

One cannot delay death, but the pain of the dying might be lessened
by a measure. The pain must go somewhere, however. Without release it becomes a poison worse than death.

Women’s Work

A collection of skills, spells, medicines, and clever tricks that
form the basis of witchcraft. There are many parts to women’s work,
but the four central pillars are easing birth, menstrual maintenance,
contraceptives, and proconceptives.

by E. Irving Couse

Rituals

Augury

Omens are notoriously difficult to
wrangle at the best of times. Haruspicy
and nephomancy are the most reliable methods (+10% chance of a
relevant answer for every HD of the creature sacrificed or hour spent
watching the sky)

Contact other Plane

There are worlds besides our own, invisible and overlapping like
grease on water or a smell on the air. Like children tapping on the
aquarium glass, we are, attempting to glean the fish in the dark
water beyond.

Control Weather

A misnamed spell. Even with magic, weather can only be guided. This
ritual requires at least a dozen practitioners and a ritual taking up at least a full day. Wizards have generally taken over most of modern meteorology, but the rain dances continue. It's a good excuse for a party, if nothing else.

Magic Circle

Runes traced in dirt, written in salt, or carved into mighty standing
stones – boundaries are laid out, blocking who may enter and who
may leave. Most common as a defense against evil spirits and
malicious Folk, most useful around the places where the space between
planes is rubbed thin. Some circles are never broken, and what
remains inside them has lasted to this day.

Passing the Torch

A ritual a lifetime in making. This is the greatest power of mankind:
not even the dragon lords considered that they might pass on their
fire.

Skywrite

There are several languages still spoken and read whose alphabets had
their beginnings in cloud-hieroglyphs. It is an essential skill for
those living on the plains. Settlements will often have permanent
cloud-signs above them, offering hospitality or warning.

Speak with Dead

The dead we have loved cannot speak, but for a few moments, they can listen. There
is time left.

Weave Tale / Weave Song

The
translation of reality into fiction into reality again. The creation
of that which fills the mead halls, of what muses sing and bards
dream. Old stories grow heavy, grow strong, pull life along in their wake. What is history, but a story? What is life, but a song?

Artist unknown

The Oldest Trick in the Book

For
those wondering, the oldest trick in the Book is Gassy Lass,
a cantrip that makes the target fart. The second oldest is
Agharan’s Copper Spike, which is a method of keeping someone
alive for several days after impaling them from anus-to-mouth on a
copper spike.

The Book itself is doing quite well for itself, though it is about ready to outgrow its second library. It might have also recently eaten a graduate student.